Posts Tagged ‘spirit’

“Join us on Saturday, Feb. 15 and Sunday, Feb. 16, for the Spirit of Yosemite Festival and catch a special screening of Ken Burns’ Yosemite: A Gathering of Spirit. Screenings at 11:30 am, 12:30 pm, 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm in the Forum Theater. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is home to an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum and four-story rainforest, all under one living roof. New and ongoing exhibits and programs offer visitors of all ages fun, engaging opportunities to explore the natural world. All exhibits are included with Academy admission. For tickets visit calacademy.org

Yosemite: A Gathering of Spirit, a documentary film by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan to honor the 150th anniversary of the landmark federal act signed by Abraham Lincoln that preserved Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. This act, the first time a government set aside land for public use and enjoyment, gave birth to the national park idea. Yosemite Conservancy partnered with renowned filmmakers, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan to bring this amazing time in America’s conservation history to life.

Costco #144 (America’s First Urban Costco) in SoMA chose to sell some Cal-branded stuff but that turned out to be a mistake.

These lovely paper plate / paper napkin sets originally sold for over $10, at first. But not many people wanted them so managers were forced to mark these things down to just $2.97, just to get them out of there.

For shame, Cal Alum, for shame. Have you no Spirit?

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I’ll bet the bright red Stanfurd sets stocked at more southerly Costcos sold out at full price.

A: “Hey babe, you used to be a Lecturer at Cal, right? Don’t you want one of these sets, you know, for a party or something?”

Curiosity will carry the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on Mars’ surface, a payload more than 10 times as massive as those of earlier Mars rovers. Its assignment: Investigate whether conditions have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life.

Plans for the Mars Science Laboratory call for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, between Nov. 25 and Dec.18, 2011, and arrival at Mars in August 2012.

The spacecraft has been designed to steer itself during descent through Mars’ atmosphere with a series of S-curve maneuvers similar to those used by astronauts piloting NASA space shuttles. During the three minutes before touchdown, the spacecraft slows its descent with a parachute, then uses retro rockets mounted around the rim of an upper stage. In the final seconds, the upper stage acts as a sky crane, lowering the upright rover on a tether to the surface.

Curiosity is about twice as long (about 3 meters or 10 feet) and five times as heavy as NASA’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003. It inherited many design elements from them, including six-wheel drive, a rocker-bogie suspension system and cameras mounted on a mast to help the mission’s team on Earth select exploration targets and driving routes. Unlike earlier rovers, Curiosity carries equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, process them and distribute them to onboard test chambers inside analytical instruments”

Remember back in the day, when the “rage-inducing” ARCO gas station at 1175 Fell was making the news for blocking traffic, particularly bikes on Fell Street? Take a gander all the way back to 2007:

The 76 you can see on the right became a Spirit gas station and that basically solved the bulk of the traffic problem because Spirit, unlike pricey 76, had copycat pricing and would generally match the ARCO within a penny or so. The salutary effect was no more lines of idling cars on the dedicated bike lane.

But the Spirit stopped selling gas a few days ago so we’re back to “normal.” See?

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Such are the travails of the purveyors of the cheapest gas in San Francisco – too many customers. This will all get solved if and when the Spirit starts selling gas again.

This was the scene last night at the Atlantic Richfield on Fell and Divisadero last night. “No Gas.” Why’s that? Who knows. Maybe it’s a temporary shutdown at this particular station for an innocuous reason. Maybe.